Overcoming Drought Part III: Saving Waste to Water

Glancing down at the toilet, you probably don't give much thought to the fate of the swirling water as it flushes out of sight. Did you know, for example, that an estimated 1.7 billion gallons of wastewater are reused every day, just a fraction of all discharged wastewater, with a potential growth rate of 10-15 percent per year? If you live in an area prone to drought, where your water supply could be restricted, if you're looking for possible long-term cost savings on water, or if you just happen to be concerned about the future of our fresh water supply, you may want to start thinking about wastewater as an alternative irrigation source--the treated kind, that is.

Save water, save money

Whiting Preston, president of Manatee Fruit Co./Manatee Floral, Palmetto, Fla., started working with reclaimed water approximately 25 years ago. Because Manatee is conveniently located right next to the treatment plant, the city asked Preston to take the plant's reused water because it needed to dispose of it. Manatee originally used the reclaimed water to irrigate its gladiolus. "What it did for us is that we didn't have to pump our well, we were able to use the water, and there was definitely a [cost] savings," Preston said. Since there was never a guarantee that the county would be able to consistently follow through with the water delivery, however, Manatee kept its water-use permits for the use of groundwater from wells, which it uses intermittently to balance out its water distribution.

Transportation of the reclaimed water from the treatment facility to the growing operation was easy because of Manatee's close proximity to the plant. The county installed a water recovery system so Manatee could retain all the water that was pumped out to them within a pond. "In an effort to conserve water and decrease runoff," Preston explained, "the county installed a pump-back system on the tail of the farm." Manatee used the water in the greenhouse for some of the cut flowers and has not noticed any adverse effects on the plants grown in the ground beds or sandy soils due to water quality issues. Preston has, however, noted difficulties with soilless medias, which has made further internal filtration necessary, though not to the point where it's potable.

"There is an obligation on the part of the user of this water not to have people drink it, and that's certainly a concern of ours. We post signs to keep people from drinking the water, and they're willing to cooperate. Reused water has to meet certain standards, and since the county has to be within those standards, they give us a report to let us know what kinds of elements are in it," Preston said.

Manatee has not had to pay for its reclaimed water since the beginning of the agreement many years ago, but Preston doesn't know that that's going to continue. "I think that over time, treated wastewater is going to become a marketable commodity as it becomes more and more difficult to receive water rights for your farm and land. It's an expensive process, but I think it's also going to become more valuable and more expensive to pump groundwater."

Manatee's case may be an anomaly; for most businesses interested in reclaiming water, their counties may be unable to foot the bill to dispose of their water and assist in retrofitting costs. Such was the situation with Color Spot Nurseries, headquartered in Pleasant Hill, Calif., which has been using tertiary-treated water since 1999. Growers in California who have access to tertiary-treated water are required by law to use it on their nursery crops. Color Spot had to set up the necessary specifications for the water from the plant, involving soil laboratories to determine the maximum salt levels the nursery could tolerate through their primary source of water. The water treatment plant then guaranteed them that they would produce water within a certain salt range and plumbed it in through an 18-inch line.

Though Color Spot did not receive any governmental assistance with retrofitting, it has still benefited tremendously from the cost savings of using treated wastewater. "The water was approximately 30-40 percent cheaper, so there was a cost benefit for us," said Jim Crockett, environmental and regulatory affairs manager for Color Spot. "We could live with the salt levels fairly well, but we decided that we also had to put in a blending station. We had to re-learn how to grow certain sensitive crops a little bit differently, so it was probably about a 3-year learning curve after the installation."

Getting started

The West and Central Basin Municipal Water District in Carson, Calif., treats industrial and domestic wastewater to secondary levels and regularly pumps it out to the ocean 4-5 miles off the coast. A portion of that water is sent to its treatment plant where it is treated to tertiary levels, and then can be sold to individual recycled water purveyors. These retailers sell it to qualified end-users. "On a wholesale basis, the recycled water is available for approximately 50 percent less relative to imported water. As a general rule, the discount to the end-user is something along the order of 20-30 percent less than they'd pay for imported water. That tends to be the largest incentive for people--the reduction in cost for water," said Mark Tettemer, recycled water project manager for West and Central. The other important benefit nearly goes without saying--constant access to a drought-proof supply of water.

West and Central pays for the water distribution system up to the meter, which is the responsibility of the individual purveyor. Downstream of the meter there are further modifications, called on-site retrofits, which are the responsibility of the end-user. "To try to eliminate [the retrofits] as an obstacle from a capital funding perspective, we'll help finance those on-site improvements. We'd like to see our expense for the retrofit repaid in 10 years. To make it sort of an invisible capital cost, we'll continue to charge them their potable water rate, and we'll use the difference between the potable and recycle rate for repayment. So they'll continue to pay their existing water bill rate over that period until it's repaid, and in essence it's not really costing them anything," Tettemer said.

And what's involved with retrofitting? The objective is to separate the domestic water from reclaimed water supplies. Most facilities receive a single supply of domestic water that they split off for irrigation needs, but to receive reclaimed water, there must be a separate distribution system built in. The signature color used for reclaimed water pipe is purple; this pipe would be connected where a normal, single-distribution water system has a backflow device for irrigation.

If any of this has peaked your interest so far, you probably want to know where you can sign up to get started. Unless you live in California, Florida, Texas or one of the other states that regularly struggles with water restrictions, you may have to be willing to do some footwork. "Usually what ends up happening is if you've got a water district that's looking to start recycling water, they'll go out and look for customers," said Rick Martin of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. "In California, many of the water districts that are doing recycling will sell the water for about 80 percent of what potable water would cost. You'll have to do some retrofitting of pipes, and then there's always the issue of whether or not, depending on the types of plants you're going to water, the total dissolved solids (TDS) level in the reclaimed water will be too high." In general, if you're interested in using reclaimed water, you should contact your local water purveyor to see if there is a pipeline running within the vicinity of your operation.

There are also certain qualifications that must be met, according to Tettemer. In the case of the West and Central Basin Municipal Water District, there are two steps involved in the approval process. "First, does the collective of potential customers economically support the project?" he said. If the project can be supported, the second step is to work with individual customers to assess whether or not they can persuade enough of them to subscribe to take the water. With enough subscribers, West and Central can then move forward with the design and construction of the pipes to resolve the on-site retrofit issues, Tettemer said.

Additionally, there are individual state regulations. "Most states now have regulations on recycled water for various applications and whether or not it's suitable for human contact or not," explained G. Wade Miller, executive director of the WateReuse Association. "The water, depending on the application, would have to be treated to whatever standard is specified for the application in the state regulations." California, for example, has a written code that identifies water quality standards that must be met to qualify for certain applications. But if you can't meet these qualifications, if you aren' t within close proximity of a wastewater treatment plant, if there aren't enough potential customers in your area to use the water, there?s still something you can do: get political.

Educating the masses

"It takes a lot of political will to take a program like this to fruition because it's tens of millions of dollars to construct facilities if [a municipality] doesn't have the capacity to do that. I think it's appropriate that everyone consider it and then move on to what they can do to make it work," offered Tettemer.

A municipality can qualify for 25-50 percent of project development costs through a U.S. Department of Reclamation program, but thus far, only 22 projects have been authorized in the past 10 years, according to Miller. Some states have created grant and loan programs, as in California, where Proposition 13, passed in 1999, created a $100 million grant/loan fund for large projects. "For a small user, it would really come down to the economics and availability of water and if this is the best alternative," Miller added.

So does it make sense to use reclaimed water in areas where drought is an infrequent issue or where the water transportation infrastructure is not there? Since there are different variables involved in many cases, including varying water rates and other economic issues, it depends. What is most needed right now is education. "It's going to take awhile to educate the planners and municipalities and politicians that this is a great way to augment existing sources of supply," said Miller. And even at just the general public level there's a lack of awareness: "People think tertiary-treated water is not even treated," Crockett said.

The WateReuse Association is trying to make headway on the education front by organizing a government-wide, multi-agency task force that would execute an inventory of various water reuse programs and practices and then look for potential opportunities. "If we can get this piece of legislation enacted," Miller continued, "it requires a report to the president and congress within the next 18 months. That would put water reuse on the radar screen. We?ve made tremendous progress in the last few months, and hopefully by the end of the session, we'll have gotten some good results."

The key here, however, is to be proactive about your water source before you have to react to the government regulations that may come with increased federal awareness of the issue. Crockett, who is planning to start lecturing on water reuse next year at the Southeast Greenhouse Conference, believes it's critical that growers begin to consider water recycling and reclamation now, while there's still time. "You need to start planning now, before you're forced to do it and you won't have the flexibility. And if you set up right to begin with, you'll be ahead of the curve. You'll become the model, instead of you trying to conform to a model that some engineer in the Department of Public Works developed because he doesn't know our industry."